For some reason, two days in a row (Monday and Tuesday) I tried to do my strength workout, which in the Hanson training plan is like speed workouts but longer intervals at your high speeds -- not as fast as you would go with shorter sprints. Monday's speeds were just for fun and to test my legs for the virtual race, and man oh boy, I had fun running faster for no reason. Tuesday's speed work was on the schedule, so I decided to stick with it even though I had just done speed work the previous day. Mistake. In the middle of my speedy portion (8.0 mph on the treadmill), I felt something go wrong in my left foot. Not a snap or a pop, but a sharp pain that didn't go away. This is not the same side that was hurting previously from the bad shoes. Right side is now good; left side is not so much. Not good. So I backed off, stopped running, and helped my treadmill neighbor try to find his iPhone. It slipped off of his treadmill, and when he turned around to find it, it was gone. Weird, right? But it was a good excuse for me to stop running while we looked under and over and inside everything. We never found the phone, and I never started running again that day.

Lesson #1: follow the stinking plan! The minute I went off the plan (for fun!), I got injured. Not a sore hip that slowly develops over time, but a sudden tweak.

Lesson #2: don't run (or do anything else) for fun. No really if you insist on being a ray of sunshine, you can, but still pay attention to how it coincides with your actual training plan.

So back to running, I decided to take Wednesday off. Taking a day off meant I walked the track for an hour, did Bodypump, and then tried to run half a mile in zero-drop shoes that I wore for class. That was just to test my foot to see how it was feeling. It was still sore, so I put running to bed for the night. On Thursday I was supposed to complete 9 miles, but I stopped at 7.25 because my foot was getting sore, like a bruise. Not a sharp pain, which is good, but I didn't want to push it to the point of sharp pain.

The good of Thursday's workout was that I was hitting speeds higher than my desired marathon pace without too much effort, and for someone who is never consistent in running speeds, my run was pretty consistent that day. It's weird to have the best marathon pace run of my training plan while coming back from my injury. Is that a sign that rest is good? I took it as divine intervention and took all day Friday off of training.